


shock horror hallelujah

by sugartweeze



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Alien Sex, Blow Jobs, Body Horror, Body Worship, Canon-Typical Violence, Freeform, M/M, Psychological Horror, Sick Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 09:13:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5042533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugartweeze/pseuds/sugartweeze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wrapped up in him, Kaworu forgets the impermanence of his own flesh. Instead, he becomes darkness, his hands float into the boy like clouds. The smell of eternity burns through Kaworu, the gristle and smoke of all his immeasurable past failures. Only Shinji feels real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	shock horror hallelujah

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Tiếng Việt available: [|translation| shock horror hallelujah - khúc thánh ca kinh hoàng](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11892498) by [Glasspiano](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glasspiano/pseuds/Glasspiano)



> I started writing this two years ago right after the 3rd movie came out as a self-indulgent way to write Kaworu and Shinji rutting against each other in their plugsuits. But then I remembered Kaworu isn't human and sex between them would probably be gross and a travesty, so I decided to write that instead. My apologies for any errors with regard to canon, it's been two years since I saw the film and three years since I watched the original series.
> 
> The title comes from [Pity Dance by DM Stith](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NGr3XAbEYA)
> 
> (I guess since this Rebuild!canon, this Kaworu is Q!woru, but every Kaworu is still Kaworu, right?)
> 
> Please pay attention to the warnings!

Perhaps it happens like this: in this timeline, Kaworu finds himself reverent. Perhaps, he doesn’t remember what human skin is supposed to feel like, the delicate balance of stretch and warm and velvet. The toxicity of the air here in the ruins, the strain of day to day--those are all foreign bodies to Kaworu, distant like the moon, or Ayanami Rei. His inhumanity is well suited to this aftermath, the sea of bones, lead paint. But Shinji, he suffers; often spits up the gluey mess of his meals, aches deep in his elbows and the back of his neck. Gets a nosebleed in the middle of their umpteenth quatre mains, an unexpected gush all over the piano, fingerprinting a half dozen sudden vermillion mistakes onto the keys. Kaworu watches, critical, very nearly worried. Shinji’s resilience is unquestionable, he knows that better than anyone, but perhaps Kaworu has underestimated the fragility of Lilim physiology. Could the weakness of the human body itself be his undoing, this time?

 

And yet, there’s a certain beauty to it all the same--the subtle asymmetries of his skeleton remind Kaworu of skylines, the complexities of musculature and nerve make him think of fractals, or dendritic patterns, or music notes. A miracle among miracles, the strange and quiet poetry of Shinji’s breathing, the fluid glittering of his eyes. Shinji watches the night sky for answers, for a sense of awe and wonder, he loses half-breaths to the cold glitter of the starfield while smiling at the glow; but Kaworu watches Shinji, finds heaven’s reach in his well-knit bones and watery smiles.

 

“I really was born to meet you.”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Fuyutsuki assigns them to train, to become acclimated to the cockpit again, the rubbery resistance of the plugsuit, the tight, voyeuristic sensation of piloting an EVA. Dual mindmelds have never been done before, and though Kaworu is a near perfect blank slate, he finds himself worrying about synch rates and thresholds all the same. Training has a much more pronounced physical effect on Shinji than anything before. His body is a collapsing house. He moves slowly, dream-caught, he says that his teeth feel numb. Kaworu knows he’s barely getting any sleep.

 

“Shinji-kun. Are you alright?” Shinji’s peeling himself out of his plugsuit, opened at the back, revealing thick slices of flesh a piece at a time. His skin is moon white, perspiring heavily.

 

“Hm? Yeah, I’m fine.” He smiles, but his voice sounds dry and hollow, like an old well.

 

“You don’t look fine.” Kaworu places a hand on his shoulder, experimentally, Shinji looks at him with an eyebrow quirked but doesn’t flinch away. “Are you sick?”

 

“Absolutely not.” Kaworu is taken aback, elated by the conviction in his voice, it ebbs when Shinji curls forward, cradles his forehead in his hands. “I’m tired. I just....ache.”

 

Kaworu sits down next to him on the locker room bench, brow furrowed. He doesn’t move his hand from Shinji’s shoulder. “Is it very painful?” Kaworu’s idea of pain is skewed, a faint impression of planets colliding, a fall from a great height. Splinters, door slams, they hold no bearing for him. Kaworu’s physical body is very much a borrowed skin.

 

“No, no, no---I’ll be fine, Kaworu-kun, don’t worry about it--”

 

“But, Shinji-kun--” Involuntarily, perhaps, Kaworu tightens his grip on his shoulder, and Shinji’s whole body goes rigid beneath his hand; he lets out a gasp like a drowned man.

 

Kaworu pulls his hand away as if stung, is already apologizing, half-horrified by what he has done.

 

“Sorry, Shinji-kun, I’m so sorry, did it really hurt _that_ much?”

 

Shinji is already waving it off, avoiding Kaworu’s eyes, “No no no, it’s fine,” he stammers, pulling errantly at his plugsuit, struggling to free his other shoulder.

 

Something has shifted, the axis of Kaworu’s spine turning at a more severe angle. Things seem to tilt toward each other, gravity is an electric presence, a strange, luminescent thundercloud in which he is submerged, ankle-deep. Kaworu stares, transfixed by the neat row of convexities that is Shinji’s spine, his rice paper skin. Shinji’s shoulder muscles wriggle back and forth--the release valve on his plugsuit must have malfunctioned, it shouldn’t be this hard to remove the suit--and he scrabbles uselessly at the thick latex with his fingers.

 

Frustration hits the boy like a tidal wave. Shinji’s mouth twists itself into something hard and ugly, his eyes remind Kaworu of colossal planets no star has ever seen. He grabs the thick, rubbery fabric in a fist and pulls, rolling it inch by inch down past his shoulder, but then he loses his hold and it snaps back into place. Shinji makes a noise then, like a beast in a forest, like a demon who can only spit flies. Kaworu can smell the salt of his burgeoning tears. "Damn it!" This is Shinji Ikari, and he has unmade the universe only to remake it once more, like a tempestuous child in a sandbox full of stars; he has bathed in blood, he was born from the marrow and the heart and the forehead of the universe itself--and here he sits, cold and sick in a locker room, petulant and overripe with self-loathing. To Kaworu, he means the whole world.

 

“Here.” Kaworu places a hand gently on Shinji’s back, just below the obtuse angles of his shoulder blades, half-open like window frames. He slides his fingertips carefully, gently, oh-so carefully and gently, into the narrow crease between Shinji's skin and Shinji’s plugsuit, peeling it down, downward, his pale hands creating space where there was none. With the other hand he tugs at the fabric, stretchy and slick in Kaworu’s grip like the skin of a sea creature. Shinji pulls back when he can, revealing a full shoulder, a bicep, almost to the dainty fold of his elbow. His heartbeat is so close.

 

(It happens like this: for a moment, Kaworu forgets himself. Wrapped up in him, Kaworu forgets the impermanence of his own flesh. Instead, he becomes darkness, his hands float into the boy like clouds. The smell of eternity burns through Kaworu, the gristle and smoke of all his immeasurable past failures. Only Shinji feels real.)

 

“Kaworu-kun?”

 

Shinji’s voice jolts him back into corporeality; Kaworu settles back into gums and toes, organelles, mitochondria. His hand lies flush against Shinji’s musician’s wrist, trapped in the muggy plastic of his plugsuit. He's bent over him like starlight over a shadowy sea, Kaworu’s chest touching the horizon of his vertebrae. He’s in Shinji’s precious space, invading every precious Lilim breath. Shinji’s turned his face away, but Kaworu can see the back of his ears flushed crimson. Kaworu knows then that he has stepped too far. He has presumed a place on his threshold when in reality the door was shut. He’s awkward here, indecorous, full-shoed. A trespasser. Kaworu’s throat goes dry as dust--to err is to be human and he is far from human, whole oceans and cities and dimensions away from human. Kaworu’s mistakes birth whole catastrophes, a myriad of martyrdoms, Shinji’s potent anguish and rage. Therefore he cannot afford to make mistakes.

 

Kaworu lowers his gaze, beginning to murmur a thousand inadequate apologies, and rescinds his touch as modestly as he can. Shinji extricates his arm with thoughtful, born-bird movements. When he’s done, his bare hand finds a stable surface, clenching around the edge of the locker room bench like a pale sea star. He pauses. Kaworu waits. He could wait forever, if needed. Kaworu thinks he’s going to curl up, or lash out, burying himself deep inside his own spiny skin. Instead Shinji turns and kisses him, fiercely, his mouth like a firebrand.

 

He smells like Kaworu dreams. He imagines Shinji swimming in his skin, piloting Kaworu’s phantasmal light through oceans bright and cold. His mind, a distant, barren thing. His soul itself breathes through all Kaworu’s imperfections, dazzles him, burns him straight through.

 

The kiss breaks, and Shinji flounders against him, still mostly in his plugsuit. Kaworu realizes with some alarm Shinji is gasping for air, his cheek hot.

 

“Shinji-kun!”

 

But he moves again, swallowing the syllables out of Kaworu’s mouth.

 

Oh, his human mouth, his human tongue! Chapped lips peeling, his mistakenly teeth, his breath feverish like ash. Kaworu could fall to his knees right there in the locker room if Shinji’s hands weren’t there, on him, releasing the pneumatic valve for Kaworu’s suit at a touch.

 

What else is there for Kaworu to do? He pulls away from the warm ache of Shinji’s mouth and strips himself away. A shuffle and twist, and he sheathes out whole from the plug suit, an unwrapped cocoon exactly the same as Shinji’s--and there’s a few seconds Kaworu unfurls from his human skin, too. The strange fit of his finger bones begin to bulge in their sockets, an unholy light glows deep in his belly and at the back of his knees. Kaworu remembers the importance of his face though, the strict ratios of brow and eyelid and philtrum, but then more faces form in places he didn’t intend, rippling in a tide of nightmares across his abdomen, the flesh of his arms. But Kaworu recovers quickly, his hands finding Shinji’s precious shoulders just in time for him to remember five fingers and a wrist: distal, ulna, metacarpal, the names like the seas on another planet.

 

Shinji doesn’t see, his eyes shut tight, and Kaworu is glad enough to kiss there, his lips gentle on his trembling, damp eyelids. His lips can feel Shinji’s great dark eye moving beneath, nothing between them but a thin veil of flesh. Shinji inhales with a hiss and leans his head back against the lockers, stretching himself almost too far between his perch on the bench and the nearest wall.

 

“Kaworu-kun, I’m scared.”

 

“I know.” His fear smells like iron, strong and metal, unbendable. Kaworu inches his fingertips between the narrow squeeze of Shinji’s plugsuit, pulling it down. He kisses the architectural side of Shinji’s throat, tonguing the ragged beat of his pulse. “I’m scared, too.” Kaworu is always afraid, always, afraid of his unanswerable destiny lost to the unfeeling stars, afraid of Shinji Ikari and the determined, unfailing march of time. Kaworu’s fear is a hot, deep blue, and sounds like the shaky intake of breath before a scream.

 

Kaworu kisses Shinji’s neck once, twice, heedless of the hot, electrical smell of the choker, like a battery in his mouth. Kaworu places his lips over the firm protuberance of Shinji’s Adam’s apple, marvelling quietly at its movement. He doesn’t let go of his hands. “Will you be alright, Shinji-kun?” That’s all that Kaworu wants, all that really matters. Of course Shinji couldn’t be all right, not while he lived in this crumbled limbo with its ceiling of frigid stars, where under the waning light of Lilith the world quietly, irrevocably lost its own mind. But Kaworu could give him music.

 

“I think so,” Shinji tells him, his voice small. “I want this.”

 

They both shiver, and the latex squeaks beneath them against the bench, and Kaworu can hear Shinji’s heartbeat, so insistent he wonders if it does not hurt, if it cannot be felt striking his breastbone the same way a hammer strikes piano wire when the keys are pressed. Shinji opens just one eye, a sliver of liquid dark, and pulls Kaworu forward into his melt. He is so soft and so blazing hot, Kaworu thinks this is what lava must feel like, the searing quake that gave birth to this crackling planet when things were new and unformed. Shinji pours magma down his throat, forming his own world inside of Kaworu. Kaworu hums, as if his wings were unfurling, and he is opening his mouth wider, spreading his knees on either side of Shinji’s thighs, everything in him opening because it feels like rightness. Shinji suddenly breaks their handhold, pushing his against Kaworu’s back so that they rock into each other, pressed tight. Kaworu’s soft skin slaps against the plugsuit, a harsh, plastic sound, but for Kaworu they might as well be bone to bone.

 

Shinji though, pulls away with a frustrated huff of breath. “This goddamn thing--” he swears, and swings a fist behind him until it bangs impatiently against the lockers. They rattle like Kaworu’s teeth. Shinji is putting his fingers in his own mouth, trying to pull the rubber off each digit. His lips have snarled up and the hair by his musician’s ear has gone dark with sweat. How profoundly human.

 

“Let me,” Kaworu says, holding the loosened seam around Shinji’s bare shoulders with both hands. He braces and pulls, watching the stretch of Shinji’s skin reveal itself to him as he pulls from the opposite end. Shinji’s veins are raised rivers crawling down his biceps, his muscles rolling like hills. He frees Shinji’s other arm, and then the suit is loose enough around his torso so Shinji can slowly squeeze himself out of it, wriggling serpentlike out of his old skin. The plugsuit bunches in uncomfortable rolls around his waist, still drum-tight on his legs and Kaworu tries kneeling on the bench so Shinji can undo himself more comfortably but that puts his groin within inches of the boy’s face and Shinji goes scarlet at the view. Kaworu laughs, and Shinji’s blush deepens. Naked, Kaworu himself is nothing--vitruvian, just numbers punched into bones, a tangle of ordered nerves. Snow pale, punctuated with wisps of ash gray hair, his fingernails in all the right places. No, he’s just what humans are (probably), according to the mathematics of their creation.

 

He sits back down into a knee-hugging crouch in the space between Shinji’s legs, keeping his mouth curved, murmuring a demure “I’m sorry, Shinji-kun,” watching Shinji’s embarrassed flush edge into his hairline. Shinji looks like he’s going to say something, then bites it back and swallows, averting his eyes. He keeps wriggling his hips, arching his back up off the bench to reach behind him and pull the fabric down, then tugging at the pinches of fabric at the top of his thighs, plunging his fingertips into the cleave. Sometimes his abdomen goes taut with a held breath. Inch by inch, Shinji’s young flesh emerges out from underneath the bunched up latex. Kaworu watches until Shinji begs him to stop.

 

“W-wait, Kaworu-kun--please--” He leans his temple against the lockers, narrow chest heaving. “Stop staring at me like that, I can’t--”

 

The world turns beneath their feet. Somewhere flowers are growing between the cracks in the concrete floor. Tomorrow the sky will be blue, beautiful and blue because it simply has to be, and the shadows will crowd around the two of them, high and long as walls. It is a strange and silent world, but it is theirs, and Kaworu must do his part to keep the gods from peeling it apart again. All the gods live in Shinji Ikari.

 

“Oh,” Kaworu says, and he can feel waves of blood cresting to the top of his skull like penitence. “Oh Shinji-kun, I’m sorry.” He bows his head, kissing Shinji on the crown. “I’m so sorry, Shinji-kun. You are just so beautiful like this.”

 

He can’t still his hands, they come up to stroke Shinji’s face, and he can’t still his soft, fervent kisses, planted like seeds across Shinji’s forehead, and cheekbones, and the divot under his chin. “You are so beautiful Shinji-kun, you’re so beautiful all the time, so perfect, just so perfect to me.” Kaworu murmurs like a prayer, the litany of Shinji Ikari, keeping his mouth close so his lips brush Shinji’s heated skin with every word. He cannot go too far, Kaworu knows. One wrong word will send Shinji fleeing desperately, then into pieces, and he’ll be nothing then, just a whirl of fog, and endlessness will be Kaworu’s again, cold vacancy in a boy-shape. Even this is close to drowning. He’s breathing in clouds.

 

“Kaworu-kun, Kaworu,” Shinji is saying, baring his throat to him again, eyelashes fluttering in stuttered lines of code. “Kaworu-kun, don’t, please, Kaworu, I’m not--I can’t!”

 

(And Kaworu will never admit it, not even to himself, but some deep part of him loves even the despair of Shinji, finds music in the scream. Watching him unravel is something like witnessing the death of a star, blown open and apart with the force of its own burning.)

 

“Shinji-kun,” he says. Kaworu wants to say, wants to tell him everything. He needs. “Please, I want you. I want you so much.”

 

Shinji makes a broken noise, something between a breath and a sob and a cry, but the tears do not come. Instead Shinji wraps his hands around Kaworu’s wrists to keep him unmoving, frozen, and Kaworu does not close his eyes when Shinji leans in to kiss him on the mouth. He just watches until Shinji fills the span of his gaze, corner to corner, until all Kaworu sees is the plane of his cheek turned aside, a bit of eyelash dripping closed. Shinji pulls away, gulping for salvation and cool air, moving one of Kaworu’s hands down, down, until he is pressing Kaworu’s palm between his own legs. Kaworu feels the roll of Shinji’s flesh, uncomfortably tight under the bunched up latex. He crushes the heel of his hand against the length of it, experimentally, and watches while Shinji twists up like a pale vine and grits his teeth.

 

“Do you want me to touch you?”

 

Shinji nods, arching his hips up even further so he’s not touching the bench at all, a trembling suspension bridge, an uneven parabola between indistinct points. Vigorous heat radiates off Shinji’s skin, and he really is beautiful like this, the surface gone pallid from the fever of wrongness, but rosy underneath with arousal. Kaworu grips the difficult rolls of latex and pulls, pulls down below Shinji’s navel, watching wiry hair emerge, the dim creases of bifurcation. The friction makes Shinji gasp, and Kaworu watches the breath roll through his naked torso, his nipples gone pert and his mouth slack. Kaworu stays where he is and keeps his hands visible, unmenacing--and it is easier that way, to keep them hands, and not indistinct blossoms of skin and light.

 

Shinji quavers underneath him, gives a bitten-back mewl when Kaworu brings finally brings the plugsuit down around his knees. His erection springs out and then up and Kaworu can feel himself roil and rise in answer, blood calling to blood. This part of humans is strange to him, but it is not new or even terrible. He has lived other lives like this, hot nights spent with Shinji underwater or in darkness, a darkness as complete as the far side of a new universe. Kaworu is vast and airless, but he is still something’s child, after all, and he gets desperate too. He crawls back into Shinji, kissing the swell of him, running his tongue along the underside, damp muscle against hot nerves. He’d swallow him all the way down if he could, just to fill himself with stars.

 

Shinji jerks and cries out his name, “Kaworu, ahhhh,” clawing at Kaworu’s hair with both hands. His voice sounds dry and painful and alive. Beautifully alive, nowhere near the threshold of surrender, nothing at all like when he sobs alone in the dark with his music and nightmares. Kaworu feels Shinji’s thin fingernails against his scalp and wonders if he is at all close to absolution.

 

To have carnal knowledge of, that is how humans describe their awkward graspings, and any knowledge of Shinji Ikari is important to Kaworu, whether they are subtle as sonatas or brutal as words. In other timelines, perhaps it has felt too much like taking--his long fingers urging Shinji to squirm and roar in rustling hospital pajamas, or crushed between school desks. Kaworu knows where to place his thumbs and tongue, keeps his mouth cave-wet so fluid drips down his chin, dampening Shinji’s pubic hair and smearing along the inside of his thighs. Shinji tightens his grip on Kaworu’s hair, pulling handfuls of it taut, raggedly jerking his hips up into Kaworu’s mouth without warning. He has roughened so quickly this time. Kaworu is reminded of the crystal structures that sometimes grow inside of broken rocks--incandescent, beautiful, needlessly sharp.

 

He takes Shinji into his throat and sighs, a full body sigh, from roots to crown and through all those many veins, knowing only Shinji’s flesh, heavy and tense and full in his mouth. Kaworu sighs again and buries closer into Shinji’s smell, his nose and chin brushing Shinji’s hair and warm, dry creases. The rubbery folds of Shinji’s plugsuit stick against Kaworu’s collarbones, he can smell it’s plastic, the acetate-blood smell of dried LCL. Above him, Shinji keens, bending one way and then the other, caught in the wind of sensations Kaworu pulls from him. His hands knead through Kaworu’s wispy hair, and one of his little fingers settles on the nape of Kaworu’s neck, and Kaworu has to remember that they are supposed to be made of the same structure of cells, cells like ladders laid across each other, cells like tiny rafts floating through vibrant color, and nothing at all like the blue waves that oscillate through his being like notes from a cello. It must be so hard, to be so completely human. What a pity, Shinji is.

 

“Kaworu,” Shinji whispers, clinging to the low rake of his shoulders. “Can you--I’m--stop, please,” and before Shinji is even done entreating Kaworu has let him go. When he looks up at Shinji he can see tears brimming in the corner of his eyes, his mouth crumpled in anguish, a burgeoning apocalypse written in every line of his young face. Deep fear and horror boil for a terrible second in Kaworu’s gullet--has everything gone wrong again? Could failure really taste so faint on his tongue, born from such momentary heated closeness? The universe is constantly expanding, all those gaps between the stars growing into blackness. Soon enough in Kaworu’s strange, spooling lifespan the night sky will be something other than the far-distant shimmering Shinji so admires. The wide maw of the universe will open up only to void, only to Lilith’s bright, cold eyes. Will he have saved Shinji by then? Before the planet becomes a liquid red ruin, before the end of everything? Kaworu wishes he knew.

 

“I just,” Shinji says, on the brink of sobs, “I know it’s wrong, but it feels so good, Kaworu-kun.” He sniffs hard, pulse thundering, curling forward like a mollusc lost in some primordial sea. When he rests his forehead in the dip of Kaworu’s shoulder it is so hot it could burn him and leave a mark. A mind aflame. “I don’t, um, think this is enough,” Shinji murmurs, breath ghosting down Kaworu’s chest. “I want more of you, Kaworu-kun.”

 

Something surges inside of Kaworu’s chest, almost tears through. Intense, meteor love, shining enough to rend him straight though. Kaworu clamps down on reality (tile, lockers, broken mirrors on the wall) and realizes he, too, is choking back tears. _You’re all I’ve ever wanted, Shinji-kun. Nothing matters so much so that you may live._ Shinji is kissing him now, all along his neck and up into the convexity of his ear, his lips feel like glowing coals, and now it is Kaworu’s turn to cling to him, heedless of the awkward stretch of latex between Shinji’s calves. He is conscious only of his hands mapping the barren countryside of Shinji’s back, the order of his contours, his precious spine. “Shinji-kun,” he says in a wounded voice ripped from his core. “Please.”

 

On the moon, Kaworu learned the earth, too, had phases. Sometimes it was verdant, peaceful as an eggshell, fragile as a soul. Other times it was pale and cold, an errant rock in a spilling vastness, swarmed with a halo of broken shuttles and satellites. He watched with his toes buried in moondust, remembering that down there, somewhere, Shinji walked through days of matter and kept breathing in his sleep. He deserved all the stars in every universe, to be happy, always, to own his thoughts and skin. Kaworu needed him to know this was love.

 

They fumbled and fell, chaotic, un-mathematical, two warm bodies in cold air. Even in disarray Kaworu knew they were already moving as one being, and the anticipation burbled inside his skull and he feared, more than anything, that Shinji’s force would overwhelm him. He would bleed out of his eyes and trap Shinji inside wings of gold and long thorns, and no long just be Kaworu but Tabris, the seventeenth of his kind, skinless and ethereal. Kaworu splayed his hands against the lockers, bracing, trying to hold on. He shuddered when Shinji traced the long line of his bowed spine with two fingers, remembering the orchestra of the human body--many different parts, one whole sound. Behind him, Shinji was working himself back up to fullness, panting, touching himself with one hand. His other hand dipped between Kaworu’s legs, spreading him apart with his fingers, rubbing one fingertip against the tightest ring of muscle. Fibres, nerve endings, pleasure centers, and Shinji’s other hand now, spreading him wide. Kaworu clamped a hand over his mouth, restraining the worst of his cries, afraid of his teeth unscrewing and falling out. Then he realizes Shinji is speaking, a steady stream of muttered words, sometimes a half-shriek, phrases left dangling in the noiseless air.

 

“Ah, I can’t, I can’t do this, nnngggh, it’s not supposed to be like this, I don’t know what I’m doing, fuck, what am I doing? Kaworu-kun!” He presses his fevered cheek between Kaworu’s shoulder blades, squeezing, maudlin. It is damp with all his shed tears.

 

Shinji pulls him back into order, like he always does, magnet on metal. Kaworu remains unbroken, all the little pieces of him humming. “Oh, Shinji-kun. Shinji-kun.” He half turns, consoling him with half kisses on all the places he can reach. “This is not an end. You do not need to be afraid.” His hand is a ghostly caress on Shinji’s cheek. “There are so many more things to come. It will be alright, Shinji-kun.” Kaworu will make it so.

 

“I don’t understand,” he murmurs, but he kisses Kaworu back, once, despite his tears, despite his breaths coming in a tidal wave like something on the cusp of dying. Shinji Ikari, the third child, conqueror of universes and hordes of old gods. He tries so hard, for all the wrongest reasons.

 

Time skips and stammers between them, then falls out of alignment entirely. In one flutter of moments Shinji is already inside of him, hands on the bony flare of Kaworu’s hips, guided by the compass of his need. A few measures behind and Kaworu is still opening himself up with his fingers, Shinji wild-eyed against him, greedily canting his hips up into their closeness. The score skips ahead and Kaworu is down on all fours now, head bowed like the prayerful as Shinji fucks into him, reckless, savage, completely off tempo, the outburst just beginning its glorious build. Something turns, then collapses and suddenly he’s the one thrusting himself inside of Shinji, the boy whimpering and bitten above him, writhing on top of Kaworu’s pale thighs. The tempo slows to a crawl and Kaworu spends hours grinding back desperately on just Shinji’s fingers, then the head of his cock, aching end to end with the need to be filled. Shinji feels so organic, a fluctuation of boyhood harmonies, his body a cage for emotions so dense and sharp they crush themselves to pieces against his bones. How wretched he is! Kaworu wants to smother him in a love so deep they can drift together in the tumult.

 

And then all their timelines converge, overlapping each other like a strummed harp, building towards a single point like the soul of something brilliant, or perhaps brilliantly dark, the gaping maw of an unknown universe bearing down. Somewhere below him Kaworu is aware of the dirt, the strain, and the slap and slide of Shinji’s plugsuit against his thighs, sticking close and then peeling away. Somewhere above him Kaworu can hear Shinji’s moans and half-sobs, calling down gods from the brink, his voice needful and frightened and alive. So alive! Isn’t it wondrous, Shinji-kun, isn’t it awful? Kaworu wants to show him. He wraps his legs around Shinji’s waist and his arms around Shinji’s neck and pushes their tongues inside each others mouths and grinds down on his erection until he can feel Shinji beginning to crest inside of him, beginning to come with a sharp, dismayed, ecstatic cry, “Kaworu!”, and though they are close, _so close_ , as close as physical bodies could be, it still isn’t enough.

 

So Kaworu, for a moment, unzips himself from himself and lets everything come undone. In an instant, they are bound in one spill, great swathes of light pouring over the boy like a shower of falling stars, like blood. Kaworu is the ache of an open door, the hollow beneath the world; he sighs and the sound of it becomes a concrete throne, a stone wing upturned. The ocean at dusk in Shinji’s moonless eyes. That time, he skittered away, _do you remember, Shinji-kun?_ How lost he was then, so soundless, so afraid. Kaworu peered through Shinji’s bones in the mist of the bathroom and spoke of forever, and poor, dear Shinji tied his tongue up in a string of uncertainty and refused to see. Oh, but it was different the next time they were alone, alone together in a cool green nightfall, the shadows devouring all of Kaworu’s words. Those thin sheets aglow in the darkness, that first time, Shinji’s heart on fire in Kaworu’s hand.

 

(But Tabris had his endgame, the turning of the seed, and he had monolith promises to keep. So Kaworu held his toes at sharp ballerina angles above the floor, six sides hovering above him in unholy light while klaxons echoed through the labyrinth of NERV. Until the sound died suddenly, like all things die, even Shinji Ikari, but that was fine so long as he did not die unloved. Red arrows, orange pools, sunset colors, a beautiful doom. Shinji tightened his grip and crushed him inside it. Nothing at all cracked that silence, just the dense splash of Kaworu's heavy, heavy skull.)

 

Back then Shinji was ironclad, lost inside the wolf of his Mother, curled like a heart inside her armored ribcage. But now he lies before him, stretched out on the rack of Kaworu’s past mistakes, exposed down to his every thought and neutrino. Now Kaworu hovers here, in the pure sweetness of a stilled present moment, and he kisses Shinji’s dark mouth and a thousand galaxies dance themselves to dust. All that ever was blurs into a symphony of becoming, caught in the in-between where nothing dies. Moths inside lanterns, dancing around the flames. In this moment Shinji is still coming inside of him, a pure human creature of held-breath crescendo. His heartbeat is just like his hands trilling scales on the piano. Kaworu swallows him inside, filling the cavity of himself with Shinji, blurring the two of them into oneness, an incandescent singularity. A broken celestial heart, making itself whole.

 

_My Lilim, don’t you see? I love you more than anything in any world has ever dreamed of loving._

 

But Shinji can only scream.


End file.
